UPDATE, 8-4-15. It's summer and the Berkeley City Council is on its long vacation, so I might not get around to a new editorial this week, and some of our regulars are also away. Stay in touch--some new pieces are in, and more on the way. And also, click "more" if you haven't read the previous editorial.  

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“All politics is local.”

That’s a truism or perhaps a cliché often attributed to one-time Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, but it probably predates him. With today’s instant updates from social media, it’s desperately hard not to be distracted by the Washington circus, but stuff is happening at the state and local levels whether we notice it or not.

Local outrages are not so easy to miss. Around here last week in certain segments of the online opinionate there’s been justifiable outrage about the fact that Berkeley has no public toilets which are open 24/7, which is hard on people who have no homes and therefore no private toilets.

Citizen efforts to provide a portable toilet for the very civilized encampment of otherwise homeless people next to BART on Adeline Street have been stalled for much too long in a typical Kafkesque bureaucratic nightmare with Berkeley officials. Maybe next week they’ll get lucky, but meanwhile we owe a big vote of thanks to Sweet Adeline bakery for graciously sharing their facilities with needy residents.

This struggle has sucked up a lot of energy from the loosely defined Friends of Adeline, who have been trying to prevent gentrification by speculators who’d like to use all the available development sites in their neighborhood to construct market rate extravaganzas instead of low-cost housing. But it’s hard to completely forget about what’s been happening when the resultant buildings loom ever larger and definitely uglier in what used to be the viewshed for south central Berkeley. (Case in point: Parker Place. Huge, vacuous, pricey and vacant.)

It’s easy, however, to miss why this change is happening.

It’s all being orchestrated at levels outside local. One level of outsider manipulation manifests itself actually and symbolically as “Plan Bay Area”. In a sentence or two, that’s a scheme which purports to be the solution for the very real shortage of housing for the many who aren’t paid enough, those employed on the fringes of the boom created by technical corporations, to compete with employees and principals of such lucrative enterprises for Bay Area housing.

Advocates of this religion believe foolishly in the simplistic high-school Econ 1 model of market optimization: They think that building lots of expensive apartments on transit lines in already dense cities will keep techies out of their cars and out of the suburbs.

I’m going to choose not to reiterate the logical challenges to that theory here, because I’ve done it all too often elsewhere. However, what it means, bottom line, is that development interests have taken control of regional planning, and the tune they’re calling is “Build, Baby, Build”.

You might reasonably hope that someone we’ve sent to the state level (where there’s a Democratic governor and a Dem supermajority) would be watching out for local interests. That’s one reason State Assemblymember Tony Thurmond was elected with big Berkeley backing, because his opponent was funded by corporate clients. But now many here who worked hard for him are disappointed to learn that he wants to become State Superintendent of Public Instruction instead sticking with the Assembly. Oh well…

Meanwhile, the Governor and his corporate-Dem buddies are backing a horrendous assortment of bills designed to strip local governments of most of their current control over what kind of edifices are built in their towns.

You knew that, right? Numero Uno at the moment, sponsored by former San Francisco supervisor Scott Wiener, is SB35.

And of course, local control of planning is not the only issue that counts, but it’s the one most likely to create contention among Democrats, so it could be the one that makes up your mind when you decide which assembly candidate to back. 

State Senator Nancy Skinner, with many corporate contributors, is hand-in-glove with the Weiner/Brown scheme, which leaves our next assembly member, whoever he or she might be, as the only possible alternative. 

That marvel of social engineering, a top-two primary election, will be held on June 5, 2018, and the general election will be held on November 6, 2018. The filing deadline is March 9, 2018 for major party candidates, and for write-in candidates May 22. 

That’s less than a year away, folks, so they’re off and running. 

What makes it tricky is that most voters think that big elections are held every four years, and in November. But with the top-two system, in a district where just about everyone claims to be some kind of a Democrat, the real excitement is in June, every two years. And our very own Fifteenth Assembly District is a prime prize in that race. 

Which is why just about everyone in the district is talking about running. At last count, let’s see, in no particular order, I’ve heard talk of: 

Andy Katz, Ben Bartlett, Buffy Wicks, Dan Kalb, Judy Appel, Diane Martinez, Jean Quan and Jovanka Beckles, with apologies to anyone I’ve forgotten. 

Last week I was invited to the Wellstone Democratic Club’s annual picnic, and it gave me a unique opportunity to get a brief first look at four of them, who showed up eager to court the favors of members of the most powerful progressive Democratic club in the east bay. 

It was a picnic, not an interview or a panel discussion, when I didn’t really have a chance to quiz the candidates, so I decided to shortcut the process by just asking on the fly what they thought of SB35. And no, I didn’t tell them it was off the record, but I’m sure they didn’t reveal anything they wouldn’t have said to anyone at the picnic. 

You might wonder what SB35 is. For an opinionated take-down, see Alarming housing bill heading for approval, by Peter Cohen and Fernando Marti, San Franciso affordable housing activists. They describe it thus: 

“Known as the ‘By-Right Development’ bill, Senate Bill 35 would eliminate the role of the community and the local commission or city council in the approvals of ‘infill’ real estate development projects.” 

That would include almost all of A.D. 15. No more public hearings for you, Berkeley, Oakland, Richmond! 

For my quick and dirty litmus test, I started with one of the two women that I’d never met. First up was Jovanka Beckles, a Richmond city council member elected on the Richmond Progressive Alliance slate. She’s obviously smart, verbal, outspoken, strikingly attractive, African-American. full of good ideas and already endorsed by several people I respect, including Bernie Sanders. 

But she didn’t recognize the SB35 bill number. However, when I told her what I thought it entails, she didn’t like the concept, because she worries about Richmond being the next opportunity site for gentrification which would squeeze out current brown-skinned residents. 

Next on my list were Andy Katz and Dan Kalb, not strikingly dissimilar. Both are White men of a certain age. Andy might be in his mid-30s, Dan maybe in his 40s. 

Both come across as earnest, wonky and well-informed. Dan is on the Oakland City Council, Andy on the East Bay Municipal Utilities District board. 

The main difference might be in temperament. Andy, whom I’ve know slightly for years, seems cautious—he was reluctant to volunteer a final opinion on SB35, saying he hadn’t yet read the most recent amendments. Dan, on the other hand, quickly characterized SB35 as bad, but then hedged a bit by saying he hadn’t read the amendments either. 

Either one would probably make a fine assemblymember, not flashy but competent. 

Finally, I talked to Buffy Wicks. I’m ashamed to admit that I identified her at the picnic because someone told me she was the only person there who looked like her name was Buffy. And she does: a perky 40ish blonde White woman. I asked her about SB35, and with no hesitation she said she supports it, as well as the whole package of the other corporate developer-backed bills. 

Uh-oh. We didn’t talk much more. 

After the picnic, I looked her up online, and got an eye-opening look at her back story. She’s clearly a national professional political operative, with friends in all the right places. A Politico piece about her was aptly headlined BUFFY WICKS Jumps into Ebay Race, a 

In fact, what she’s doing is usually called parachuting in, and with a golden parachute at that. It’s rumored that her war chest is already in the hundreds of thousands, with a million or more anticipated. She’s only lived here for a little over a year and has held no previous elected office anywhere, but she’s wired. 

From her campaign website: “Buffy is proud to have been an architect of President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. She is credited with innovating Obama’s grassroots organizing model – from right here in Oakland.” 

Unfortunately perhaps, I happen to be reading Steve Phillips’ best-selling Brown is the New White, which advances the thesis that emphasizing demographics with a coalition of non-Whites and their White allies, was the winning strategy for Obama. 

In a chapter provocatively entitled Fewer Smart-Ass White Boys, under the equally provocative sub-head MYTH 2: BRILLIANT WHITE CAMPAIGN STRATEGISTS GOT OBAMA ELECTED, he says that “The voters of color who provided the margin of difference in 2008 and 2012 didn’t cast their vote for a historic candidacy because the White hands of tech-savvy whiz kids typed fancy code on computer keyboards. They were carrying on the legacy of hundreds of years of struggle.” 

Maybe he was referring to people like Wicks, maybe not, but he’s got a point. Since his book came out last fall, he’s had a couple of good op-eds in the New York Times suggesting that the official Democratic party should concentrate on mobilizing its natural allies among the non-White voters instead of trying to win back the mythical working class White men who voted for Trump. Sadly, the DCCC’s recent announcement of “A Better Deal” in a backwoods Virginia town seems to indicate that they haven’t yet gotten the memo. How does Wicks stand on this spectrum, I wonder? 

Next, I accepted an invitation signed by former Berkeley Mayor Gus Newport, former Berkeley councilmember Ying Lee, Friends of Adeline organizer Margy Wilkinson and others to a meet-and-greet with Jovanka Beckles in a storefront child care center on Adeline. At the event I recognized some key long-time activists in the East Bay African-American community. 

Let’s just end this by saying that my second look at Beckles was even more impressive than my first. She opened herself up to a round of questions from each and every one of the 30 or so attendees, and gave quick on-target answers on a lot of hard topics, including the Sacramento trend to take environmental controls away from local governments. 

At the moment, I might be old-school, but I think I’d prefer an assembly member with substantial local experience. I know I’d prefer that another person of color replace Tony Thurmond, in a state where we have all too few African-Americans in state office. And also, how about a woman, another under-represented group in Sacramento? 

With these criteria in mind, Beckles looks pretty good right now, but I’d like to have the same close look at the cast of thousands who aspire to take this seat before deciding which to support, so I’m awaiting invitations from the other candidates. As academics angling for the next grant often say, “Further research necessary”. 

 

 

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‘To Defend Berkeley’s Values Against a Hostile Administration Is Surreal’  

Modern Luxury/San Francisco Magazine interviews Mayor Jesse Arreguin.

The splintering of the powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into warring camps—with Qatar, supported by Turkey and Iran, on one side, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), supported by Egypt, on the other—has less to do with disagreements over foreign policy and religion than with internal political and economic developments in the Middle East. The ostensible rationale the GCC gave on June 4 for breaking relations with Qatar and placing the tiny country under a blockade is that Doha is aiding “terrorist’ organizations. The real reasons are considerably more complex, particularly among the major players. 

Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn once described the Syrian civil war as a three-dimensional chess game with five players and no rules. In the case of the Qatar crisis, the players have doubled and abandoned the symmetry of the chessboard for “Go,” Mahjong, and Bridge. 

Tensions among members of the GCC are longstanding. In the case of Qatar, they date back to 1995, when the father of the current ruler, Emir Tamin Al Thani, shoved his own father out of power. According Simon Henderson to of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Saudi Arabia and the UAE “regarded the family coup as a dangerous precedent to Gulf ruling families” and tried to organize a counter coup. The coup was exposed, however, and called off. 

Riyadh is demanding that Qatar sever relations with Iran—an improbable outcome given that the two countries share a natural gas field in the Persian Gulf—and end Doha’s cozy ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Indeed, if there is any entity in the Middle East that the Saudis hate—and fear—more than Iran, it is the Brotherhood. Riyadh was instrumental in the 2013 overthrow of the Brotherhood government in Egypt and has allied itself with the Israelis to marginalize Hamas, the Palestinian version of the Brotherhood that dominates Gaza. 

But fault lines in the GCC do not run only between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Oman, at the Gulf’s mouth, has always marched to its own drummer, maintaining close ties with Saudi Arabia’s regional nemesis, Iran, and refusing to go along with Riyadh’s war against the Houthi in Yemen. Kuwait has also balked at Saudi dominance of the GCC, has refused to join the blockade against Doha, and is trying to play mediator in the current crisis. 

The siege of Qatar was launched shortly after Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, when the Saudi’s put on a show for the U.S. President that was over the top even by the monarchy’s standards. Wooed with massive billboards and garish sword dances, Trump soaked up the Saudi’s view of the Middle East, attacked Iran as a supporter of terrorism and apparently green-lighted the blockade of Qatar. He even tried to take credit for it. 

Saudi Arabia, backed by Bahrain, Egypt, and the UAE, along with a cast of minor players, made 13 demands on Doha that it could only meet by abandoning its sovereignty. They range from the impossible—end all contacts with Iran—to the improbable—close the Turkish base—to the unlikely—dismantle the popular and lucrative media giant, Al Jazeera. The “terrorists” Doha is accused of supporting are the Brotherhood, which the Saudi’s and the Egyptians consider a terrorist organization, an opinion not shared by the U.S. or the European Union. 

On the surface this is about Sunni Saudi Arabia vs. Shiite Iran, but while religious differences do play an important role in recruiting and motivating some of the players, this is not a battle over a schism in Islam. Most importantly, it is not about “terrorism,” since many of the countries involved are up to their elbows in supporting extremist organizations. Indeed, Saudi Arabia’s reactionary Wahhabi interpretation of Islam is the root ideology for groups like the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda, and all the parties are backing a variety of extremists in Syria and Libya’s civil wars. 

The attack on Qatar is part of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive new foreign policy that is being led by Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammad bin Salman. Since being declared “monarch-in-waiting” by King Salman Al Saud, Mohammed has launched a disastrous war in Yemen that has killed more than 10,000 civilians, sparked a country-wide cholera epidemic, and drains at least $700 million a month from Saudi Arabia’s treasury. Given the depressed price for oil and a growing population—70 percent of which is under 30 and much of it unemployed—it is not a cost the monarchy can continue sustain, especially with the Saudi economy falling into recession.  

Underlying the Saudi’s new-found aggression is fear. First, fear that the kind of Islamic governance modeled by the Muslim Brotherhood poses a threat to the absolutism of the Gulf monarchs. Fear that Iran’s nuclear pact with the U.S., the EU and the UN is allowing Tehran to break out of its economic isolation and turn itself into a rival power center in the Middle East. And fear that anything but a united front by the GCC—led by Riyadh—will encourage the House of Saud’s internal and external critics. 

So far, the attempt to blockade Qatar has been more an annoyance than a serious threat to Doha. Turkey and Iran are pouring supplies into Qatar, and the Turks are deploying up to 1,000 troops at a base near the capital. There are also some 10,000 U.S. troops at Qatar’s Al Udeid Airfield, Washington’s largest base in the Middle East and one central to the war on the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Any invasion aimed at overthrowing the Qatar regime risks a clash with Turkey and the U.S.  

While Egypt is part of the anti-Qatari alliance—the Egyptians are angry at Doha for not supporting Cairo’s side in the Libyan civil war, and the Egyptian regime also hates the Brotherhood—it is hardly an enthusiastic ally. Saudi Arabia keeps Egypt’s economy afloat, and so long as the Riyadh keeps writing checks, Cairo is on board. But Egypt is keeping the Yemen war at arm’s length—it flat out refused to contribute troops and is not comfortable with Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam. Cairo is currently in a nasty fight with its own Wahhabist-inspired extremists. Egypt also maintains diplomatic relations with Iran. 

Besides the UAE, the other Saud allies don’t count for much in this fight. Sudan will send troops—if Riyadh pays for them—but not very many. Bahrain is on board, but only because the Saudi and UAE armies are sitting on local Shiite opposition. Yemen and Libya are part of the anti-Qatar alliance, but both are essentially failed states. And while the Maldives is a nice place to vacation, it doesn’t have a lot of weight to throw around.  

On the other hand, long-time Saudi ally Pakistan has made it clear it is not part of this blockade, nor will it break with Qatar or downgrade relations with Iran. When Riyadh asked for Pakistan troops in Yemen, the national parliament voted unanimously to have nothing to do with Riyadh’s jihad on the poorest country in the Middle East. 

The largely Muslim nations of Malaysia and Indonesia are also maintaining relations with Qatar, and Saudi ally Morocco offered to send food to Doha. In brief, it is not clear who is more isolated here. 

While President Trump supports the Saudis, his Defense Department and State Department are working to resolve the crisis. U.S. Sec. of State Rex Tillerson just finished a trip to the Gulf in an effort to end the blockade, and the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is threatening to hold up arms sales to Riyadh unless the dispute is resolved. The latter is no minor threat. Saudi Arabia would have serious difficulties carrying out the war in Yemen without U.S. weaponry.  

And the reverse of the coin? 

Doha’s allies have a variety of agendas, not all of which mesh. 

Iran has correct, but hardly warm, relations with Qatar. Both countries need to cooperate to exploit the South Pars gas field, and Tehran appreciated that Doha was always a reluctant member of the anti-Iran coalition, telling the U.S. it could not use Qatari bases to attack Iran.  

Iran is certainly interested in anything that divides the GCC. The Iranians would also like Qatar to invest in upgrading Iran’s energy industry and maybe cutting them in on the $177 billion in construction projects that Doha is lining up in preparation for hosting the 2022 World Cup Games. Also, some 30,000 Iranians live in Qatar. 

Figuring out Turkey these days can reduce one to reading tea leaves.  

On one hand, Ankara’s support for Qatar seems obvious. Qatar backs the Brotherhood, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party is a Turkish variety of the Brotherhood, albeit one focused more on power than ideology. Erdogan was a strong supporter of the Egyptian Brotherhood and relations between Cairo and Ankara went into the deep freeze when Egypt’s military overthrew the Islamist organization.  

Qatar is also an important source of finances for Ankara, whose fragile economy needs every bit of help it can get. Turkey’s large construction industry would like to land some of the multi-billion construction contracts the World Cup games will generate. Turkish construction projects in Qatar already amount to $13.7 billion. 

On the other hand, Turkey is also trying to woo Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies for their investments. Erdogan even joined in the GCC’s attacks on Iran last spring, accusing Tehran of “Persian nationalist expansion,” a comment that distressed Turkey’s business community. As the sanctions on Iran ease, Turkish firms see that country’s big, well-educated population as a potential gold mine. 

The Turkish President has since turned down the anti-Iran rhetoric, and Ankara and Tehran have been consulting over the Qatar crisis. The first supportive phone call Erdogan took during the attempted coup last year was from Qatar’s emir, and the prickly Turkish President has not forgotten that some other GCC members were silent for several days. Erdogan recently suggested that the UAE had a hand in the coup. 

Is this personal for Turkey’s president? No, but Erdogan is the Middle East leader who most resembles Donald Trump: he shoots from the hip and holds grudges. The difference is that he is far smarter and better informed than the U.S. President and knows when to cut his losses.  

His apology to the Russians after shooting down one of their fighter-bombers is a case in point. Erdogan first threatened Moscow with war, but eventually trotted off to St. Petersburg, hat in hand, to make nice with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And after hinting that the Americans were behind the 2016 coup, he recently met with Tillerson in Istanbul to smooth things out. Turkey recognizes that it will need Moscow and Washington to settle the war in Syria.  

The Russians have been carefully neutral, consulted with Turkey and Iran, and have called on all parties to peacefully resolve their differences.  

There is not likely to be a quick end to the Qatar crisis, because Saudi Arabia keeps doubling down on one disastrous foreign policy decision after another, including breaking up the Arab world’s only viable economic bloc. But there are developments in the region that may eventually force Riyadh to back off.  

The Syrian War looks like it is headed for a solution, although the outcome is anything but certain. The Yemen War has reached crisis proportions—the UN describes it as the number one human emergency on the globe—and pressure is growing for the U.S. and Britain to wind down their support for the Saudi alliance. And Iran is slowly but steadily reclaiming its role as a leading force in the Middle East and Central Asia.  

There is much that could go wrong. There could be a disastrous war with Iran, currently being pushed by Saudi Arabia, Israel and neo-conservatives in the U.S. and Russia, the U.S. and Turkey could fall out over Syria. The Middle East is an easy place to get into trouble. But if there are dangers, so too are there possibilities, and from those springs hope. 

 

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Conn Hallinan can be read at dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and middleempireseries.wordpress.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The helplessness of homelessness, as viewed from Oakland, applies to Berkeley too. 

 

In March of 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump was asked: "Your slogan is 'Make America Great Again,' When was America actually great?" Trump responded that America was last great in the late forties and the fifties. Sorry Donald; I remember that period and it wasn't great.Trump explained that after World War II: "We were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody... we were pretty much doing what we had to do." Most Trump voters agree with this sentiment , but their response is influenced by when they were born -- for example, Trump supporters born in the sixties think the eighties were great. 

As to be expected, Trump's recollection of the fifties is way off. He recalls, "We were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody..." But this was the era of the Cold War with Russia (U.S.S.R.). Trump conveniently forgets the "Iron Curtain" and the threat of nuclear war. (Many of us, who lived through that period, remember "duck and cover" exercises where students prepared for a Russian nuclear attack.) The fifties era was dominated by anti-communist rhetoric. There was a "Red scare" led by anti-communist zealots such as Senator Joseph McCarthy. 

Now Trump wants to normalize relations with Russia and replace the Cold War, in the public consciousness, with the threat of a global war with terrorists. Trump has combined this dangerous image with his vision of an invasion by undocumented immigrants; Trump's obsession with building a wall along the southern border stems in large part from his obsession with these immigrants. Thus Trump would replace the "Red scare" of the fifties with a new "brown scare." 

Trump recalls the fifties as a period where, "we were pretty much doing what we had to do." He's ignoring the fact that a huge portion of the world -- the USSR and mainland China -- was "off limits" to Americans. Nonetheless, during the fifties US corporations dominated trade in "the free world." (We came out of World War II with a robust economy whereas the economies of most of our allies had been decimated by the war.) It's understandable that Trump, and his supporters, long for a simpler time when the US economy ran the world and and American companies dominated trade. Realistically, that time is long gone. We now live in a much different, global economy. 

One way to interpret Trump's comments, "We were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody," is that he is referring to the United States. Another way to interpret this remark is that he is referring to white folks, white men in particular. Indeed, the fifties represents the zenith of what UC professor George Lakoff has described as the "strict father" morality: "In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says... This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth." In many regards, from a cultural standpoint, the fifties was the last decade where white men reigned supreme. 

Obviously, Trump ignores the fact that the late forties and early fifties witnessed a resurgence of white supremacy -- which had been somewhat muted during the war years. After the end of World War II, "Jim Crow" laws were strictly enforced in most parts of the country and many people of color were forced to use segregated facilities. (The initial battle against segregation began in 1955 with the Montgomery bus boycott and culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.) In general, the late forties and early fifties was a period of unfettered racism and sexism. (Until the Trump era, this was the last period where hate and bigotry were considered politically correct.) 

So, when Trump says he want to "Make America Great Again," he's calling for a return to the mentality of the fifties. In terms of foreign policy, he wants America to be the top dog, to once again be the world's policeman. And in terms of domestic policy, he's calling for a return to the era of white supremacy, to the period where straight protestant white males ruled American cultural life. Trump is calling for an end to "political correctness" and, indeed, for an end to everyday decency. 

Trump doesn't actually want to "Make America Great Again," his intention is to "Make America Hate Again." 

 

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Bob Burnett is a Berkeley writer and activist. He can be reached at bburnett@sonic.net or @BobWBurnett 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A rationale of some who become noncompliant with mental health treatment is the idea that we could fix our mental illness with "enlightenment." That would be a Buddhist type of enlightenment, or, for some, it might be prayer of a Christian type—or, it might be piousness of some other religious practice.  

My experience has been that it never hurts to learn more about how my mind works. For more than thirty years, I have done a massive amount of cognitive work, based partly on Buddhist concepts, and based on observing my mind.  

That said, I have found that there is no amount of meditation I can do that fixes the "hardware" problem that my brain has. While mindfulness can help with some of my symptoms and can also help in dealing with meditation side effects, trying to go without medication, if I tried that, would continue to be foolish, and a disaster.  

There is definitely a great role that meditation can fulfill in the life of a mentally ill person. It can help in the acceptance of the reality of being mentally ill. It can help tremendously in the absurd life situations that come with being mentally ill in society. These include the fact of living in poverty due to being unable to work, being at the mercy of government authorities, being shunned by those who are prejudiced against mentally ill people; and getting up in the morning to face another day.  

Many people have self-esteem issues related to mental illness. The common belief is that we are somehow "less" if we are mentally ill and if we have to take psychiatric medication to survive. Being unable to work, (albeit many mentally ill people actually are able to work) is yet another blow to self-esteem.  

Meditation allows me to dis-identify with the idea of having an "imperfection."  

Medication and therapy are necessary, despite all of the work I have done to make my mind better. You could see treatment as the foundation upon which meditation is constructed. If the brain is continuously generating erroneous data, meaning delusions and hallucinations, or, if the mind is unwilling to come out of clinical depression or mania, there is no point in trying to fix it with cognitive techniques, mindfulness, or meditation--the brain just isn't working.  

Should we practice meditation? I would give an emphatic yes. Should we continue to comply with treatment? Absolutely, yes. Meds don't usually block meditation. Generally, medicating the brain is what makes meditation possible, because the brain is working somewhat normally and isn't taken over by symptoms.  

Meditation can help us rid ourselves of behavior problems that continue to nag us despite being in treatment. By learning from mistakes, and learning how we can free ourselves of false needs, it makes it far easier to produce better behavior.  

Meditation, mindfulness, cognitive therapy and/or prayer, are all things that can help people with mental illness. Yet, let's not forget conventional treatment; these are biologically produced conditions.  

Dear Trumpsters:

Even after observing Trump's hate-filled, bullying campaign for president, I can understand, but not excuse, why you voted for him.

Perhaps, you thought Trump would bring change for the common folk or you just couldn't vote for a woman who had so much perceived baggage. Of course, you totally disregarded Trump's obvious baggage.

Since taking office, Trump has done nothing for the average working man and woman. Instead, he has championed big business and the wealthy. In sum, Trump's presidency to date is grounded in ignorance, irrationality, and immorality.

You Trumpsters are in deep self-denial that is downright shameful. I implore you to wake up and face reality. You really don't want the America envisioned by Trump. 

Summer's Shakespeare time, hereabouts, and excellent productions of two of his best-known plays have just opened--his fantastic comedy 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' staged for free at the old Civil Works administration (CWA) amphitheater in John Hinkel Park, and the most iconic Shakespearean tragedy of all, 'Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,' at the intimate Phoenix Theatre in the Native Sons Building near Union Square in San Francisco. 

--''If we shadows have offended ... " Puck's epilogue to and apology for the bawdy comedy of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' which mocks social conventions stifling young love, love itself--and finally theater--is maybe the archetypal apology of artists standing in front of their peers to show them what they're like ... 

What's often passed off as a light, old-fashioned comic fantasia for summer diversion--and it has that aspect--is also a cunningly sophisticated thing, operating on three overlapping layers at once--the young lovers of the ancient city of Athens (and their king, Theseus, who's just taken Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, captive, intending to marry her) who take to the woods to escape, or pursue, and end up enchanted and romantically confused; the Rude Mechanicals, craftsmen who moonlight as thespians, rehearsing to put on an entertainment for Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding, until their bombastic lead, Bottom the Weaver, is transfigured with an ass' head; and the band of fairies in the woods, whose own performance consists of trickery, of mortals and each other, Oberon their king commisioning his waggish jester Puck to importune his feuding fairy queen, Titania, which ends when Titania falls in love with ass-headed Bottom. 

And that's the success of Inferno Theatre, with a big (20 person), young cast, most new to Inferno, consolidating into an active. flexible ensemble with the direction of Inferno's founder, Giulio Perrone, whose expertise in both Grotowskian style contemporary theater and the venerable Commedia Dell'Arte comedy of the Renaissance (with roots going back to antiquity, the comic mimes who performed when these romances originally entertained around the Mediterranean) informs every scene, tableau and vignette. 

Inferno's production nimbly juggles the three stories, which slide seemlessly and coyly together and apart, graced with physical comedy, song, dance and acrobatics, often seen multiply at once. To quickly single out three of the performers, Sharon Shao as Helena, the spurned admirer of Demetrius, who pursues Lysander's love Hermia instead, proves a lithe practitioner of physical comedy, cast against type in a way as Helena, but interpreting the part perfectly, with charm, exceptional focus and clarity--and plenty of juice ... enchanting and enchanted Indigo Jackson as Titania, the Fairy Queen, also fine as a gestural actor (she's the choreographer as well), her ethereal character heightened, not diminished by the bawdy love affair with Bottom as the ass ... and Jack Nicolaus, who played a clown in last summer's splendid production of 'The Tempest' by Inferno at Hinkel, again the genial, if overbearing comedian, too willing to take on any and all roles, till he's cast in one by the fairies he never auditioned for. His transformation, realized as he gallops roaring, ass-headed, across the outdoor stage with Puck astride him as the rehearsing Mechanicals scatter, is a great tour-de-force of magical slapstick. 

At the play's conclusion, the opening day audience, many of them picnicking families of all ages, roared out an ovation. Each of Inferno's three annual Shakespeare plays at Hinkel has been intriguing--and the last two have topped what came before. It's a delightful way to spend a summer afternoon in the amphitheater's hollw under the branches of the park.  

Saturdays and Sundays at 4 through August 13 at John Hinkel Park, 41 Somerset (take Southampton off northbound Arlington onto Somerset), not far from Indian Rock. For questions & to reserve spots on the amphitheater teraaces, especially for people of limited mobility, infernotheatrecompany@gmail.com or call 229-8137. Lawn chairs, cushions, blankets, layered clothing advised. infernotheatre.org 

--"What a piece of work is man! ... And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?" Distracted, the seemingly mad Prince of Denmark (Lijesh Krishnan as Hamlet, by turns boyish and imposing) extolls the virtues of humanity and parades his own disgust in a soliloquy witnessed by his bemused and alarmed schoolmates, Rosenkrantz and Guidenstern (a marvellously syncophantic comic duo, Alan Quismorio and Myles Wynn), who Hamlet skewers satirically as agents of his uncle the king, in the Ninjaz of Drama's lucid production of this most elusive of great plays at the Phoenix Theatre near Union Square in San Francisco. 

Ninjaz founder Rey Carolino has directed a committed ensemble of 13 to realize a rendering of 'Hamlet' rare in its fluid movement, scene to scene, and its clarity of both parts and the whole. Like last year's production of 'Lear,' which Carolino also directed, this 'Hamlet,' trickier in so many ways to do, is constantly illuminated by lines and scenes that suddenly stand out as if the spectator (well. this spectator) had never heard or seen them before. The court scenes in particular are arresting in their atmosphere. And the Player King's speech (spoken excellently by Greg Gutting, also a fine Osric), requested by Hamlet and alternately panned and admired by the unctious Polonius (a fine Geoffrey Colton, last year's Lear--and a fine sarcastci Gravedigger in this show), is wonderfully mimed by the other players (Jackie Haslam, Tim Foley, Tracey Baxter), whose 'Murder of Gonzago,'the "mousetrap" play-within-a-play "to catch a king!" (an alternately smooth and discomfitted Claudius, well-presented by Federico Edwards) is another high point, as are the appearances of Hamlet's father's ghost (played with gravity by Edwards) on battlements and in bedchamber when Hamlet corners his mother the queen (a splendid Kathryn Wood). 

David Abad has expertly cut the script, as he did with 'Lear' before. I couldn't always agree with Carolino and Abad's presentation of Ophelia and Hamlet, displacing their encounter from immediately after his most famous soliloquy, contemplating death, maybe suicide, then greeting his erstwhile love: "Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered," which as philosopher Gaston Bachelard commented, immediately identifies Ophelia as a kind of scapegoat for suicide or sacrifice--and "nymph" suggesting the water where she drowns, truly mad as Hamlet toyed with madness. Her lines, in many cases, must be spoken in a kind of ironic style, which I think blunts the integral meaning, paired so closely with Hamlet's. 

But this is at most a quibble. This production, which has plenty of contemporary touches, abandons the usual, rather passive anachronistic "interpretation" of Shakespeare, which has become such a cliché--kitsch, even, a one-to-one transference of time and place, "signifying nothing"--and attempts an original interpretation, which works in light of its genuine contemporary sense, and with an excellent performance by Emily Ludlow. 

Arcady Darter (who handled the choreography) as Laertes and Krista White (fight coordinator) as Horatio are cast croos-gender successfully, a contemporary practice with good results here. Maria Graham's costuming is imaginative.  

There are few enough productions of 'Hamlet' that grasp asense of the whole play. It's a poetic chimera, pressed into service over the centuries to reflect afull spectrum of ideas--and this one deserves its place with the truly cognizant renderings. I hope you see it. 

Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 through August 5, with a 3 pm matinee Sunday July 30, at Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, suite 601, just off Geary, a block from Union Square. $20-$25 (discount tickets through Goldstar, all ticket lnks at ninjazofdrama.com)

On Saturday, July 22, West Edge Opera presented an evening of music by Mozart and his contemporaries. This concert was held at Dashe Cellars, an Oakland winery. The performers in this concert will be heard again in West Edge Opera’s forthcoming season, which will include L’Arbole di Diana/The Chastity Tree by Vicente Martin y Soler, Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas, and Frankenstein by Libby Larsen. 

Making his American debut was German bass-baritone Malte Roesner, who will later perform the role of Doristo in The Chastity Tree. Making her West Coast premiere was soprano Aurora Perry, who recently became the wife of Malte Roesner. Tenor Samuel Levine will later take the title role in Libby Larsen’s Frankenstein. Finally, Robert Mollicone performed as piano accompanist at this concert and he will later conduct The Chastity Tree.  

The July 22 program at Dashe Cellars focused on music involving Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, and composers Antonio Salieri, Franz Xaver Süssmayr, Vicente Martin y Soler, Maria Theresia von Paradis, and, last but not least, Ludwig van Beethoven. All of these remarkable individuals were active in Vienna during Mozart’s lifetime and often collaborated with Mozart in one way or another. Thus, this concert was dubbed “Mozart and Friends.” 

First on the program was a series of songs by Vicente Martin y Soler, a Spanish composer best known perhaps for his opera Una cosa rara, a brief passage of which features in the banquet scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. In Soler’s Songs for Miss Miller, the lyrics are by Lorenzo da Ponte. Soprano Aurora Perry offered a lively, richly expressive performance of these five songs. Next came bass-baritone Malte Roesner singing three songs by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, a composer best known as Mozart’s copyist and the man chosen by Mozart’s widow, Constanze, to complete Mozart’s unfinished Requiem after his death. With his dark-toned bass-baritone, Malte Roesner excelled in the Süssmayr songs. 

A change of pace was offered by pianist Robert Mollicone, who performed Beethoven’s Variations for piano on a theme from Süssmayr’s opera Soliman II oder die drei Sultaninnen. True to form, this instrumental work by Beethoven was the most musically complex piece of the entire program, exquisitely performed here by Robert Mollicone. Following the Beethoven came three songs in German by Antonio Salieri, sung here in duets by Samuel Levine and Aurora Perry, whose voices blended nicely. Then Aurora Perry sang four songs by Mozart. Especially lively was the fourth and final song, Die Veilchen/The Violet.  

Next we heard three songs by Maria Theresia von Paradis, a noted Viennese woman composer and virtuoso instrumentalist on violin and piano. These Songs for the Duchess of Saxony were elegantly sung by tenor Samuel Levine. Finally, all three singers joined in to perform Songs and Duets for the Princess of Wales by Vicente Martin y Soler. And, finally, the singers performed a canon by Martin y Soler in which they plead, “We sang for you. Now we want to be paid, for we must eat!” 

On this humorous note, which suggested to the audience that they might wish to contribute to the West Edge Opera coffers, the evening’s musical program came to a close, though audience and performers alike then gathered to eat delicious cheeses and drink refreshing wines courtesy of Dashe Cellars.

I don’t know if it was this year’s rainy winter, but something gave us a bumper crop of Merola singers for 2017, as seen – and heard – in a program of three one-act operas presented July 20 & 22 at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. On tap were La serva padrona by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736), Savitri by Gustav Holst (1874-1934), and The Bear by William Walton (1902-1983). All three operas were conducted by Christopher Ocasek and directed by Peter Kazaras, with set designs by Donald Eastman.  

Pergolesi’s delightful 1733 opera La serva padrona is similar in plot to Donizetti’s much later Don Pasquale, with both operas treating relations between an older man and a much younger woman who manages to twist him around her little finger. Here the young woman, Serpina, was coquettishly sung by Jana McIntyre, who posseses exquisite vocal technique, great acting ability, and a soprano voice that will take her far. Jana McIntyre is definitely a singer to watch! Equally impressive was bass-baritone Daniel Noyola, a native of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, who sang the role of Uberto, the old codger who gets outwitted at every step by Serpina. Noyola has a robustly masculine voice, excellent diction in Italian, and a flair for comic roles. Together, Jana McIntyre and Daniel Noyola were as superb in their roles as one could ever hope to hear. 

Gustav Holst’s Savitri, which premiered in London in 1916, is based on an episode from the Mahabharata. Savitri is the loving wife of Satyavan, but Death comes to claim the life of Satyavan. Savitri pleads her case so eloquently, even offering to die in her husband’s place, that Death consents to offer her one wish, but it can only be for herself, not for her husband. Savitri phrases her wish in such a way that her own happiness necessarily includes continuing to share her happy married life with Satyavan. Death, outwitted, retreats. Sung in English, the role of Savitri was beautifully sung by soprano Kelsea Webb. She possesses a mellifluous, powerful voice with tremendous range, from Wagnerian high notes to the burnished chest-tones of a mezzo-soprano. Kelsea Webb also possesses admirable technique. 

Death was sung by David Weigel, whose stentorian bass-baritone has great power and elegance. Satyavan was sung by tenor Addison Marlor, and though his role is the least important of the three roles in this opera, Marlor sang with ringing clarity. A lush orchestral score was occasionally accompanied by a subtle soprano chorus.  

William Walton’s 1967 opera The Bear is adapted from Anton Chekhov’s play of the same title. Walton composed it for Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival. The plot of The Bear revolves around a Russian widow in mourning who is confronted by one of her dead husband’s creditors who demands repayment of a loan. Though chided by her servant, Luka, for her excessive fidelity to her dead husband, the widow resists all social intercourse with the world, until the moment when, in the midst of a raging argument with her husband’s creditor, both the widow and the creditor realize a flaming spark of sexual interest in each other. Walton’s music playfully highlights the mock-melodrama of this plot. Performed here in English, Popova, the widow, was lustrously sung by mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon. Her servant, Luka, was robustly sung by bass-baritone Daniel Noyola; and the role of the creditor, Smirnov, was uproariously sung – and acted – by bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum. All three singers were superb in their roles. Ashley Dixon’s aria, “I was faithful all my life,” accompanied largely by solo piano, was a highlight of this opera, though it was matched again and again by the blustering masculinity of Quattlebaum’s Smirnov, whom Popova disdainfully refers to as “The Bear,” until that moment near the end when “The Bear’s” macho demeanor suddenly seems overwhelmingly seductive to her, and they couple passionately onstage. 

If the seven singers heard in this Merola program of one-act operas are any indication, the Merola 2017 Grand Finale scheduled for Saturday, August 17, at the War Memorial Opera House promises to feature a bumper crop of young singers well on their way to outstanding careers in opera. Don’t miss it!

Robert Estes, born in Oakland, was for years someone you'd meet at theater productions and events all around the Bay, as a spectator or helping out behind the scenes. I first ran into him at Novato Theatre Company over a decade ago, when he offered me a ride back to Berkeley, saving me an early exit before curtain to catch the last bus to the cross-Bay transfer.

But it wasn't till the approach of his sixth decade, in 2010, that Estes directed his first full-length play, after years of assisting for a wide range of productions & directing staged readings, with 'The Curse of the Starving Class' for Actors Ensemble of Berkeley at Live Oak Theater. (Robert reminded me that I wrote about that show for the Planet; I remember Holly Bradford's impressive performance well ... ) A few years and about a half dozen plays as director later, Estes founded Anton's Well Theater Company, named after one of the great Chekhov's many social projects, water wells and libraries among them.

"Chekhov believed every person should leave something behind. Younger people, with their own concerns and sense of time, usually are the ones to set up new theater companies. I'm 57 years old. I want to bring some fresh water to theater. Like in baseball, which goes from the rookie leagues up to the majors, there's a lot of room between, say, in the East Bay, community theater and Berkeley Rep. By starting a company that's in between layers, I can develop as a director, help others develop, keep people from having to go somewhere else to make theater, help fill the gap. we've premiered several plays new to the Bay Area. [including Sam Shepard's two-hander, 'Ages of the Moon'--it was a Sam Shepard play that was the first professional stage production Estes ever saw, which his father took him to.] And a small company can sometimes put on a better show than the major companies do."

Right now, Estes has a show running through August 6 at the Temescal Arts Center, the Bay Area premiere of another two-hander--though one with a difference--Philip Ridley's 'Tender Napalm.' And by year's end, with another show, title to be announced, at the Berkeley City Club, Anton's Well will celebrate its third anniversary with its seventh production.  

 

Of 'Tender Napalm,' Estes said "I love plays involved in language, that finds a way to talk about love, falling in and out of love, about children, the passage of time--elliptical, immediate, yet very precise, which could also be said of another Bay Area premiere of ours at the City Club, 'what Rhymes With America.' " 

Estes hopes to expand Anton's Well's seasons to three plays a year, bring in other directors--and keep introducing new plays to the Bay Area, helping audiences and theater people, including himself, to go forward, their eyes on the future. 

Anton's Well's production of ''tender Napalm,' Fridays & saturdays at 8 through August 5 at Temescal Arts Center, 511-48th Street (just off Telegraph), Oakland. $17-$20. antonswell.org

Lear. What! art mad? A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?

Glouscester: Ay, sir.

Lear. And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the great image of authority; a dog’s obey’d in office.

---

I saw a replay of women in soul
Sing at the Obama Whitehouse

Front row Barack and Michele

What love I feel
How much beauty they brought us
What beauty they brought to lead us
Such dignity
Such warmth
As Aretha belts it out, so much
Respect

Michele in her seat gets down and dirty with
Rhythm
Half time clapping
Shining lipstick on such a kind face

I am grateful they brought the strut to the
Whitehouse
Brought the rhythm and the culture in
Radiating dignity and love

I loved my country then
A leader radiating dignity
Calm
peace
love
Dignity again and again
Always

Now, one vote later,
Dogs in Office

Face of pouty rage
Contempt
Resentment
Destruction
Dignity melted like chocolate in the sun
Replaced by infantalism
Schoolboy rage
Meanness

Was Dignity and love so painful that
Contempt and hate were needed?

Dogs in Office
Is all lost?